The Den

I finally edited three of my video clips from Burning man down to size so that you can download them in less than 12 hours through a normal network connection. You'll find them at the end of the Burning Man 2007 photo album.  I guess now that its been over a month since I've been back, I should let y'all know what I thought about this year's little party in the desert.

Well, even though much of Black Rock City was as I expected it would be, my experience was very different from the previous times I've been , but it was still a very good thing.  The art and the community, juxtaposed with the physical setting of the Black Rock playa and the surrounding mountains, make for an enlightening week of 'otherness' no matter where you're coming from. I realized while I was there that there were three main reasons for the really different experience I had this year.

The first one was kind-of expected: I was camping totally solo for the first time. This had its ups and downs, but it was the right way to do it this year. On the upside, I didn't have to deal with any of the coordination & interactions of several people when preparing for, or being on the playa. Not that its that hard to do, but its just more to think about and balance out. No one's schedule mattered but my own, no-ones car, no one's food preferences. On the downside, putting together even a small camp with a decent sturdy shade structure, and dealing with all the shopping and prep, is a LOT of work, and when you're on your own, you gotta do it all. There are certain economies of scale involved as you add people to your camp. Another  reason that solo camping worked for me this year was that I had good friends in at least four other camps, and met several others through the week. With so many friends around, I could wander to their camps and hang out when I wanted company, or invite them to mine.

 The second reason the experience was so different this year was also predictable, but not in the way I expected it would be. The last time I was there, in 2003, the population of BRC topped out at just over 30,000 people.  This year, the final count was over 47,000 people - about a 60% increase. I remember thinking years ago that once it was over 30,000, would you even notice a difference at 50,000? Both numbers are so huge. In some ways, it wasn't noticable - walking around the residential areas of the city felt about the same, being in center camp felt the same, standing in line for ice felt the same. But the differences were in things like - I arrived on Monday morning at 10am, and couldn't find an open space to camp until I was on the 10th street out from the esplanade. TEN blocks out, on MONDAY morning. Last time I was there, the outermost street was the 9th street, there was no ten, and on Monday morning, there were about 25% or less of the people there. So yah, that kinda hit me.  Then when I was out on the playa late that night, again - monday night/tues morning (when the man was pre-burned), the activity that was happening out there was unexpectedly high - it felt like I would have expected on Thursday or Friday night, not Monday. When Friday did roll around, the bustle and activity on the playa at night was insane - totally over the top.  So yes, you DO notice the difference.

The final, and deepest reason that my experience was so different this year: My previous 3 times (especially the first) all happened during a period of major transition in my life - the end of my decade at Reed and in Portland, a time of travel & exploration before settling here in the Bay Area and into my job at Pixar.  This time, however, I'm in a more settled period. While life is always changing, I'm currently in one of the mellower periods of life, internally and externally. So, because of that, Burning Man didn't have the emotional depth of meaning that it did previously - which isn't a bad thing at all, its just a reflection of where I am. But going to Black Rock City is always such a step out of your normal life, that it was truly like a much needed vacation. More so than when I visit family or friends in other parts of the world, more than when they visit me, because it was a vacation for just me, into a world that was both familiar and new, and totally NOT my day-to-day life.

The desert heat wasn't actually too bad this year, although I still usually spent the mid-day hours lounging in my shade structure or in someone elses, usually sipping gin & tonic or the like. But the dust - oh my the dust. Several dust storms hit during the week, the worst one on Monday evening, after most people had left (I didn't leave til early tues morning). It  starting blowing dust about 6pm and blowing for at least 6 hours. By morning, many of the well-worn streets were invisible, and the dust-drifts were about 6-8 inches deep in places.

Many who haven't experienced the joy that is playa dust often envision sandstorms and  the kind of mess you end up with when you track a lot of sand in from the beach. No, this is nothing like that. During one of the storms, I didn't get to the skylight/vent in the roof of my van soon enough, and once the 40mph dust-laden wind hit, there was about 5 minutes of full exposure though the vent. The way I described to my mom what that did to the inside of the van was this: imagine taking a 25lb sack of flour, dumping it on your living room floor, and blowing a high-power fan at it for 5 minutes.  Except that playa dust is finer than flour.  Yay.

It was a big cleanup job when I got home. But fortunately, the playa gives, and the playa gives again. This second gift was in the form of a fellow who's now become a very good friend, named J.  We met randomly out on the playa when I was taking photos of artworks - he saw my NZ greenstone around my neck, and asked about it, since he had a similar one. After some chatting about New Zealand and other things, it turned out he was travelling for a while after Burning Man and needed a ride back to the Bay Area. Since I had come and camped alone, it wasn't to hard to shuffle my stuff around in the van to make room for him. Once we got back home, of course, I told him about couchsurfing.com and invited him to stay for several days, which he did.  Not only was J great company and fun to hang out with, but he totally cleaned the inside of the van top to bottom!  He even took the curtains down and washed them! (not a fun task, and probably the first time it's been done in the life of the van).  I still don't think I can ever thank him enough for that.   J stayed in the bay area for a few weeks, mostly over with an uncle who lives in Mill Valley, on the other side of the San Rafael bridge, and we hung out several more times before he headed north.  He's currently wandering around Oregon and Washington, and will be back here for a while in Nov. sometime. 

So, there's still plenty of playa dust lingering around the house, and the basement. But one thing about Burning Man, once you go, even once, it stays with you forever, in more ways than one.